


Whenever We Start

by prettybrilliantfunny



Series: We're Steady Apart [2]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Episode 2x60, Episode Related, Episode Tag, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2020-02-15 18:13:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18674878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettybrilliantfunny/pseuds/prettybrilliantfunny
Summary: There’s another rift.Another dead (yet decidedly not) giant.Another chasme. (And Fjord staggered under its sound.  It went for Yasha, stiletto mouth sinking into pale skin, and still Fjord’s heart battered wildly against the cage of his chest.  Run, the drumbeat called).Coda to C02E60 "A Turtle By Any Other Name"





	Whenever We Start

(Not so much time after all.)

 

It was a good idea--fireballing the bone pit--but Fjord could see the guilt flinch across Caleb’s face as the small goblin squawked and gibbered and burned to ash.  He wanted to tell him as much, but he was a room away and Nott was there too, her bare toes curled over the edge of the pit. Her face was hard for Fjord to read most days, but then again, they usually left it to Caleb to do their translating--and Nott for him.  Her luminous eyes, fixed on the smoldering pit, were unblinking beneath the curtain of her hair.

Caleb’s certainty wavered--at war with his conscience; his concern for Nott was palpable, even at a distance.

“Maybe don’t...don’t burn things you can’t see.” Nott’s quiet rasp carried; while the others acted as if they hadn’t heard, Fjord only had eyes for Caleb--the trembling hand that passed over his mouth, leaving the faint bruise of soot along his chin.

“ _Ja_ ,” he whispered.

 

~ ~ ~

 

Beau bounded up the stairs--the ombre sash of her vestments trailing behind her--and was gone from sight before anyone could offer to go along.  Fjord felt highly suspect about the monk investigating anything in this hell-hole on her own, her speed be damned, but he also knew he was in no fit state to volunteer as he normally would.  He’d been buffeted by healing magics left and right, but there was still an unsettling hollowness inside him that he worried was unshakeable.

Frumpkin slunk past him, tail curling around his knee--and then Caleb’s hand was on his shoulder.  It was all the warning he got before the wizard sent his consciousness skittering up the stairs and into his familiar, leaving Fjord wholly responsible for his safety.  It wasn’t the first time he’d been Caleb’s anchor; though, it had happened far less of late. The further they had pressed on into Xhorhas, the more Caleb and Beau had gravitated toward one another--the Empire kids, cast adrift from that empire--and it was the monk always within reach.

“Best be careful,” Fjord teased under his breath. “She might start thinkin’ you care.”

Of course, Caleb couldn’t hear him.  His eyes and ears were Frumpkin’s now, and the object of Fjord’s joke was probably jabbing rocks and mushrooms with her staff and calling it investigation.  Still, it gave something for Fjord to do as he waited for the all-clear. Nott’s impatience sent her off into another room after only a minute or so, and Jester made a helpless, pleading face before Fjord waved her on and she flounced away after the goblin girl.  Fjord would wait for Caleb.

He ghosted his hand over Caleb’s and held it there, for one self-indulgent moment.

He felt the wizard come back into his body--the sudden tension in his hand, the swift inhale as he took quick stock of new-old surroundings.  He recovered quickly. (Sometimes, when they were on the move, Caleb would drop out of Frumpkin and find himself a mile from where he’d been when he started--those times, it took him a minute to readjust and Beau -- her scowls a poor mask for her concern -- would hover nearby until he was himself again. Fjord took a quick survey and the eyes Caleb’s turned on him were focused and bright.  Fjord squeezed his hand.

He watched the answering smile smooth the tired lines of Caleb’s face, a pleasant whisper of heat creeping up his neck.  They were standing close; a shift from one would bring them into swift contact with the other, but neither moved. The sensation of Caleb’s hand pushing, pulling at his armor blazed in the back of Fjord’s mind.

“Thank you, _bärchen.”_ Caleb’s eyes caught on Fjord’s mouth as he spoke, and Fjord had just enough nerve to lick his lips ( _a challenge? a reminder?_ ) before the air around them shifted. Caleb boldly met his gaze--and Fjord could see the magic jumping electric around each blue ring.  The moment hung---and then fell away.

“The others are calling,” Caleb murmured, stepping back.  The hand on Fjord’s shoulder slid away from beneath his own, the tips of Caleb’s fingers trailing lightly down his arm and then away as he turned to the stairs ( _a challenge; a reminder_ ).

 

~ ~ ~

 

There’s another rift.

Another dead (yet decidedly _not_ ) giant.

Another chasme. (And Fjord staggered under its sound.  It went for Yasha, stiletto mouth sinking into pale skin, and still Fjord’s heart battered wildly against the cage of his chest.   _Run_ , the drumbeat called).

 

~ ~ ~

 

The Landspeaker’s backhand nearly bisected the second chasme--its carapace crunching horribly inward.  It was dead before it hit the wall, but the sight of its body splattering against the wall was no less satisfying.  (The giant also looked mighty pleased with herself, though from so far down it was hard to be certain).

Fjord made a mental note to buy Caduceus all the tea he could carry next they were in town; convincing Soorna to come along had probably saved all their lives (his own, most certainly).

Caleb’s magic rushed past him, a muffled crackling sound (another cocoon incinerated in his hands), and enveloped the massive snapping turtle.  In its place was a much smaller, though no less determined, painted box turtle. It inched forward and began gumming the toe of Fjord’s boot.

“Don’t worry--I’ll save you, Fjord,” sing-songed Nott’s creaky voice.  

Fjord grit his teeth--one of these days she and him were gonna have it out--and forced a smile instead.  While the spectral mage hand hucked the turtle-giant into the rift above, Fjord released the falchion back to its pocket dimension, ready for a few moments of rest.

“Are you alright, Fjord?”

He opened one eye to squint up at Caleb.  The wizard was holding out a waterskin, and despite the tentative offering--his gaze didn’t waver.

“It’s starting to feel just a bit mean--all the--” Fjord gestured broadly at the room but Caleb knew what he meant, a sardonic smile lifting his mouth. “What do these jellyfish things have against us, anyhow?”

“You are the sailor. I assumed they were holding a grudge.”

A joke. Caleb was telling a joke.  There was no change in his usual inflection or tone, but it was a joke nonetheless.  It took half a second longer for him to realize, but when he did Fjord almost couldn’t bite back the laugh that welled up inside him. He rolled his eyes and took a long swig of water.

“I have not -- to my knowledge -- enacted any harm upon a jellyfish,” he replied.  Then he snorted, “Demonic or otherwise.”

“To your knowledge,” Caleb echoed lightly, and Fjord smacked him with the waterskin.

 

~ ~ ~

 

It was late, too late by far, when the group bedded down ( _at last, at last_ ), thunder and lightning taking up a fistfight over top of them. Nott was half-propped against Yasha, already asleep, and it was no surprise when Caleb went to her; though, Fjord was impressed by the bravery required to tuck in by her feet.  They’d all spent enough nights together under the dome--a sufficient, but by no means spacious set-up--that Fjord had become well acquainted with the assorted nightly habits of the others. Caduceus’ snores were fit to wake the dead (particularly after expending a good portion of his healing magic); Beau never seemed to sleep a full eight; Nott _kicked_.

And Caleb? Fjord shifted uncomfortably on the hard rock of his bed as memories rose without permission--of cramped nights in the wagon (when Molly was still--) and Caleb’s body curled in on itself, his back against Fjord’s back, radiating a steady, bone-settling warmth.  Despite his own protests of the cold and the way he sunk into the ragged layers of his coat, Caleb was always warm.

He also possessed the enviable ability to fall asleep immediately.   

Fjord watched him for a while, under the half-lidded guise of sleep.  The dome itself was softly lit, to the benefit of those unable to see in the dark, so it was easy to trace the outline of his silhouette--even to make out the minute rise and fall of his breath.  

Sleep of his own felt out of reach. The storm outside too like the toss and turn of the ocean, the raging serpent that drowned him in his dreams.  But as he kept watch over Caleb, his nerves settled, his breathing slowed. In and out--the steady-sleep pull of their breaths synchronized from opposite ends of the dome.  He could feel his eyelids growing heavy, the ache in his bones fading under the desperate call to rest; and then, just before sleep claimed him, the familiar sensation of another voice bloomed inside his head.

“ _Sorry about the turtle._ ”

Fjord laughed, quietly--the only answer he could muster before exhaustion pulled him under at last.


End file.
